Freon said:
A game should be played easily, without having to install GBs of software and reading tons of manuals, FAQs and forum posts.
When you download a 100k file and think it's the whole game, that's
your fault. I went with the smart route, and downloaded the full install,
like the NS install guide suggests. I read the one paragraph that they have at the top of the intro page on the Natural Selection website, and on the "download the beta" webpage. By doing that, (ie, following the simple procedure of downloading the full install, like I was told to do) I havn't had a single problem with steam save for the occasional slow startup. There's nothing badly written about "Download the full install of steam, then the full install of NS." You just download the full install of steam, install it, then download the full install of NS and install that. I don't understand why this was such a hard concept, nor why it can't be followed, let alone why you should blame steam on you not following the instructions provided to you.
Freon said:
But the way VALVe (ab)uses its dominant position really pisses me off :tdown:
Yeah, I'd say they're in a dominant position. Half life is THEIR game, their engine, their code. They paid good money liscencing quake 2 and developing their components on top of it, so it's theirs for the keeping and using, however they see fit. If they want you to mod it, they let you mod it. If they don't want you to mod it, you won't be allowed to mod it. That's their choice. Steam is also their code, their baby. The mod makers don't
have to use steam. They've chosen to use it. That's their choice. You chose to develop UT maps. That's your choice. It's the same thing. If they want to sell mods, that's their choice too. They're already doing it now, look for "From the makers of Counter Strike: Day of Defeat!
in stores now!". Epic has a similar arrangement with UT; they reserve the right to prohibit any modification of their game from being distributed, and they retain control over all content produced on their engines. They havn't had to exercise that yet with anyone, thank goodness. In any case, the potential is there. It's no different from any other game studio. If Sentrystudios was able to have Epic host, distribute, and let people know about Infiltration through their servers and their downloads, do you think they'd say "no, we don't want to reach the entire fanbase of UT players."? Then say Epic approaches them and says, "well, we'd like to charge $5 per download. We'll give you half." Are they going to say no? That, I don't know. What about $3? $1? How much would you pay to download a game at your bandwith's max rating every time, with no waiting? What about a 150 meg mutator pack of every currently available mutator on the web, including new gametypes, guns, and so on? I might pay $1 for that. Maybe even $5.
NotBillMurray said:
Second, you have to do this really awkward 'run Half-life' first approach which isn't intuitive at all (kinda like 'Run UT before INF', which is pretty dumb for a mod).
That's a steam related compatability check. They want you to run Half life first so that all of the half life files are confirmed to be correctly installed. That way, Natural Selection will run. You only have to do that the first time, anyway, to confirm your files are updated.
I've been playing the beta quite a bit, and havn't entered HL since I started.
Now, I'm not saying there's problems with steam, but in this case, if you followed those instructions that they give on the top of their page, that
one line, then there wouldn't be any problem. As far as NS not being on steam as a "first party" app, that's because they're still in beta. AFAIK, when they finish with the betas, they'll be completely steam complient, and you'll be able to download it strait from them, and not one of the assorted odd download sites.